Canal Saint Martin

We decided to revisit St Germain this morning so took a metro directly from Arc-de-Triomphe to Saint-Paul and then walked to Ile Saint-Louis. It started to rain just as we were passing a wee café, La Lutétia, so we popped inside and enjoyed coffee and tartines while watching people walking past under their umbrellas. By the time we were ready to continue our walk the rain had stopped and the sky was blue again. We went along past Notre Dame to Shakespeare and Company, fortuitously joining the fast growing queue about ten minutes before it opened at midday, which meant that we got straight in. The doorman put the chain across just behind us so we felt very lucky. It was nice to be back and we looked at the art books as well as going upstairs to the second hand section. We continued nostalgically along the Rue de Buci and  across the Pont Neuf where we jumped in a metro train to La Villette. We went for a gorgeous autumnal walk from the Bassin de la Villette along the Canal Saint-Martin. It was quite pretty in an urban way, with locks and high pedestrian bridges at intervals along it. Lots of people were out for a Sunday walk along the canal. We stopped for a quick coffee at a busy wee café, then continued along until the canal literally disappeared into a tunnel beneath Paris and could be seen no more. It apparently goes underground until it emerges at Bastille shortly before it joins the Seine. We walked the short distance to Place de République and took the metro to somewhere about half way along the Champs-Elysées. Then we strolled along in the evening sunlight towards our hotel, stopping for a really delicious dinner at Café L’Etoile 1903 just round the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. It was decorated in fin de siècle gilt adorned style and the waiters were very friendly, like most (perhaps all, I can’t be absolutely sure) of the Parisian waiters whom I have encountered over the years. Their fearsome reputation seems to me unwarranted. After collecting our cases we travelled by RER train to Charles de Gaulle Airport. And as a wee end of holiday bonus we were given an upgraded room at the Novotel! Our room is on the top floor, smart and spacious, and after all our walking around Paris today it was great to put our feet up and relax. 

Bois de Boulogne

This morning it was raining so we headed for a museum that we haven’t been to before, which is quite near our hotel, the Musée Marmottan Monet. We visited a temporary exhibition of paintings of people sleeping by a variety of artists, which was mildly interesting, and then went downstairs to the permanent collection to pay our respects to Claude Monet. Some of his work is magnificent, some of it not so much. I really liked La Barque, a little boat on water that looked full of pondweed, with a leafy branch over it. And I liked Impression, Sunrise, which Monet painted from his window in Le Havre with its blood red sun rising through a blue haze, a couple of little boats in the foreground. It’s apparently where the term Impressionism got its name. 
We then emerged into gratifyingly dry and sunny weather and walked the short distance to the Bois de Boulogne. 
It was lunchtime so we made our way to the nearest restaurant, the Chalet des Îles. In 1852, the Bois de Boulogne was ceded by Napoleon III to the city of Paris and major work on its redevelopment began the following year under the direction of Baron Haussmann. As part of these plans, a lake was created with two islands connected by a bridge. Meanwhile Empress Eugénie decided that she really liked a chalet that she saw in Bern, in Switzerland. So the Emperor had the whole chalet dismantled and transported by train and rebuilt on the large island on the lake! It is now a restaurant, and to get to it we took a wee ferry across the water. The restaurant was smart with a wood burning stove, and was busy with families. One family was celebrating a birthday and we noticed that some of them were singing Joyeux Anniversaire and others were singing Happy Birthday! We had a delicious lunch, although James’ duck was so rare that he remarked that our niece Jenny, who is a vet, could still have revived it! Or as he put it, “got it back on the wing!” which I thought was very funny. Then we took the tiny ferry back and going for a lengthy walk around the Bois de Boulogne past the Longchamps Racecourse and along woodland paths, which looked absolutely beautiful in the autumn sunshine. Birds were singing in the woods, there were lots of herons at one end of the lake, as well as swans and ducks on its banks. From time to time we could see the Eiffel Tower peeking over the tops of the trees. James expertly navigated us out of the north of the park and back to the 17ième arrondissement for dinner in the Café Armance.